Escalation policy overview

An escalation policy is a custom set of rules for incident alerting, ideal for creating advanced incident alerting processes. It defines who will be alerted and in what order, continuing until the incident is acknowledged.

You can also escalate incidents based on metadata This allows you to route incidents based on its metadata, such as severity or ownership. You can find more details in Metadata in escalation policies.

Creating an escalation policy

1. Navigate to Escalation policies.
2. Click Create escalation policy.
3. Name your escalation policy.
4. Configure the settings as outlined below.
5. Click Create escalation policy.

Escalation policy settings

Alerting

Choose who to alert, including options like:

• Specific team members
• Current on-call team
• Slack or Microsoft Teams integrations
• Zapier and Webhook integrations

Severities

Severities are customizable and allow for preset alerting methods applicable across multiple escalation policies. To create a new severity:

• Navigate to Escalation policies → Create severity.

Time-based rules

Specify conditions to stop the escalation policy or escalate to another policy at specific times.

Delay

Set a time delay using Wait for [ ] minutes before escalating to. The alerting flow will begin after the defined period.

Delay the escalation step until a specific time by clicking ... -> Wait until…

Metadata-based rules

Use metadata to define custom notification flows. This allows incidents to be routed based on metadata like severity or ownership, providing greater flexibility.

You can find more details in the Metadata in escalation policies.

Instructions & todo list

Insert a custom text with a list of tasks as a comment into the incident timeline automatically. This allows you to share a specific set of instructions or links, providing immediate context for on-call.

You can read more details in the Runbooks guide.

Multi-step policy

To create multiple escalation steps:

1. Click Add another step.
2. Define the action for the next step if the previous step is not acknowledged.
3. Rearrange steps by dragging them to a new position.
4. Remove steps by clicking the x in the top-right corner.

Repeating policy

Set the number of repetitions in the Repeats dropdown menu.

Assigning an escalation policy

Creating an escalation policy does not apply it on its own. You need to assign it to the monitors, heartbeats, or integrations whose incidents it should handle.

Assign a policy to a monitor

1. Open the monitor and scroll to its on-call and escalation settings.
2. Select Escalation policy.
3. Choose the policy you created, or create a new one.
4. Save the monitor.

Assign a policy to several monitors at once

Select the monitors you want in the monitors list, then choose Configure on-call escalation from the bulk actions and pick your policy.

Heartbeats and integrations

The same Escalation policy option is available when you edit heartbeats, incoming webhooks, and email integrations. Assign a policy there the same way you do for a monitor.

What happens without an escalation policy?

If you leave a monitor on Notify the primary responder, Better Stack uses a simple escalation. It notifies the current primary on-call by e-mail, escalates to the rest of the team if the incident is not acknowledged, and triggers all of your integrations. This is why integrations such as Slack still notify you even when no policy is selected.